East St.Louis

Last night, I worked in studio until about 2 am, crashed at home, and then got up at 7 to meet the client we're working with for our community development class. Although there's five of us on the team, the time we all meet for class is actually the only time during the week where we are all free. So today's site visit to East St.Louis only had three of us attending.

I got lost coming over, and the member of the team I'd carpooled with, a 2L SLU law student, was totally lost with the street atlas I had, but I was able to figure out where we were. East St.Louis is pretty small, after all. It's kind of an stigmatized city- one of the highest crime rates in the country will do that- but there has been new development which is encouraging. A large part of East St.Louis, however, remains mostly run down residential, car washes, liquor stores, and churches. There's really only two places one can buy groceries.

Anyway, the project is a renovation, really a gutting and a re-roofing, of an existing building. So I'm kind of excited. The client also drove us around the city to show us the kind of problems she is trying to remedy, and the strategy of her work. It was very interesting. Most people never go into East St.Louis unless its to continue drinking past 2am or to gamble.